China Daily regularly tweets promotional photographs from various Chinese regions, but this time it caused an unexpected backlash from Russian Twitter users who thought China was claiming parts of Russia as its own.

You’ve got some nerve, you deplorable wolves, haven’t you? A donut hole is what you'll get instead of our Altay.

Soon, other users were trying to set the record straight. Altay is a mountain range in south-eastern Siberia that stretches between Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. In each country there is a region whose name includes a local variation of the name Altay.

In fact, in Russia there are two separate administrative units of different federal levels: the predominantly Russian-populated Altay Krai and the Altay Republic, also known as the Mountainous Altay.

Beautiful views of the Chinese Altay! But the Russian Altay is many times more beautiful, the Mongol or Kazakh Altays don’t ever come close to it.

It is possible that Russian Twitter users reacted so strongly due to popular fears that Russia is quietly ceding some of its border territories in the Far East to China. Or it was simply yet another example of social media outrage over something rather trivial. Whatever the case, at least it came with some shots of stunning scenery.

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